É disso que se trata: análise funcionalista de clivadas com demonstrativos neutros

Abstract

In this research, we investigate the use of cleft structures (CLIV) in Brazilian Portuguese, such as é (d)isso (de) que eu gosto ('it is this that I like'), é (n)isto (em) que acredito ('it is in this that I believe'), and é (d)aquilo (de) que precisamos ('it is that which we need'), where focus is attributed to a neutral demonstrative pronoun (DEMNt) in phoric and/or deictic textual functions. The overall objective is to analyze functional and formal aspects related to the use of these structures, aiming to explicitly and discuss: (i) the functions performed by the focused CLIV; (ii) the semantic types of the most frequent verbal lexemes in these CLIV; (iii) the establishment of referentiality of the focal constituent (CF) DEMNt; and (iv) the alternation between usage and not usage of prepositions in the focal constituent, depending on oblique complement function. To achieve this, we draw on Functional Linguistics from the North American tradition and apply principles of iconicity and marking (Givón, 1984, 1990, 1995) as well as expressivity (Dubois; Votre, 1994). We also consider contributions from studies in other linguistic currents/perspectives on focus and clefting (Longhin, 1999; Dik, 1989; Braga, 1989), referentiality (Santos; Cavalcante, 2014), and semantic classification of verbs (Borba, 2002; Neves, 2011). This research is qualitative-quantitative in nature and descriptive-explanatory in terms of its objectives, with empirical data sourced from the Corpus do Português NOW (News On the Web), comprising 850 occurrences of CLIV in online newspaper and magazine comments and articles. Our analysis demonstrates that the studied CLIVs enable focus attribution beyond the focal constituent through phoricity to Focused Content Coders (CodCF), and they can serve functions such as contrast, emphasis, support for reference elaboration, summarization, and finalization. Moreover, the predominant features observed in these CLIVs include: (i) verbs classified as 'state' verbs (Borba, 2002) nucleating the SV of the presupposed part, with a notable pattern like [É DISSO QUE SE TRATA]; (ii) DEMNt 'isso' in anaphoric and hybrid reference to distributed referents; and (iii) preposition in the oblique CF, constituting a more recurrent strategy, more marked in Givonian terms, and less marked in terms of expressivity. Finally, in addition to CLIV with and without CF prepositioned, we also analyzed the possibility of CLIV being produced as doubly prepositioned, with a preposition before CF and another before 'QUE', or as relative-type, with just one preposition, preceding ‘QUE’.